


Things We Share

by shit-escalates (Schm0use)



Category: Red Rising Trilogy - Pierce Brown
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 07:32:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4995763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schm0use/pseuds/shit-escalates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are twins in nothing but date of birth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things We Share

There is something odd about this girl, Adrius thinks.

She looks so _familiar_...

Their noses are so close they are nearly touching. She’s about his age, so four years old, or nearing it. And she has the same golden hair and eyes—but, of course she does. His father would never allow him to mix with lower Color children. 

Adrius opens his mouth wide and so does she. He sticks his tongue out and she does the same. Bares his teeth at her—now they are both grinning ghoulishly.

He stares at her, stone-faced (she is now equally serious), and then squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again, hers are still closed.

“I win,” he says. Her eyes spring open, and then she covers her mouth with her hands and starts to laugh, realizing her mistake.

“Are you both quite done?” his father asks, in the voice that means he is slowly losing patience.

“Who is she?” Adrius inquires. Who is this girl that mimics his every move?

“Adrius, this is Virginia,” his father tells him. “She is your—”

“Sister!” the girl cries gleefully, and throws her arms around Adrius. He is stunned.

He has a sister?

Nero looks at the children’s mother in exasperation. “I thought we agreed to tell them when they first met, not before.”

“I couldn’t help it,” their mother says. “She was so excited…”

Now that Adrius looks between them… he realizes why the girl looks familiar. She looks like his mother. _Their_ mother. Who is wearing much the same expression as Virginia, eyes twinkling in delight.

Adrius isn’t quite sure what he’s feeling, but he does not think it is delight. “How old are you?” he asks Virginia.

“Today is my fourth birthday!” she tells him.

He gapes at her. That is impossible. If today is her fourth birthday, and she is his sister…

“You are twins, little ones,” his mother says.

On his—their—fourth birthday, Adrius meets Virginia for the first time.

***

They do not see each other often. Their father keeps them apart to protect his heirs from attempted assassination. Adrius thinks he is merely a last resort.

He and Virginia are twins in nothing but date of birth. There are no similarities between them, save for their extraordinary intelligence, even amongst Golds. He is smarter than she. But in every other area, she is superior.

For their eighth birthday, they go vacationing on Luna. Virginia does not like it there—she wished to visit Earth, where the Society has cultivated the “Blue Planet” as it was once called back to its original, pristine state. There, oceans and forests intertwine in abundance. Virginia loves the outdoors, loves the natural world.

Adrius is far more suited to Luna, an ocean of steel, a forest of concrete. He far prefers the opulence of luxurious living to the rustic open earth. He would very much like to be rich, some day—perhaps richer than his father. Richer than the Sovereign herself.

Their parents have gone to the theater to socialize with the Lune family. He and Virginia have been left alone in the skySuites of the Augustus estate. The rooms are large enough to ride a horse in—he doesn’t understand why Virginia is so disappointed to have to stay in them, but she says she feels “trapped”. He is content to read.

“Adrius,” a voice says, and he looks up from his novel on advanced mathematics. “Do you want to play something with me?”

Virginia stands over him, peering at his book. Her retinue of servants trails behind her. One of the Browns appears to be holding some kind of heavy board game set.

“No, thank you,” Adrius says. Then he smiles, because it seems the appropriate thing to do. “Maybe later. This was just getting interesting.”

“Is that _Theory of Games and Economic Behavior_?” Virginia asks. Uninvited, she plops herself down next to him, cross-legged. “By von Neumann and—”

“Morgenstern. Yes.”

“Oh, that’s a fantastic book,” Virginia says, flicking through it and _losing his page_. He resolves to stay calm. “Do you like chess much, then?”

“I’ve never played it,” he says stiffly. “I don’t like games.” Virginia’s eyes widen.

“What? But, so much of this book is based off of tactics in chess—”

“I know that,” Adrius says. “I still understand how it works perfectly well.” He is not at all irritated about the fact that his sister has already read and finished the book—no, he is not. Nor is he annoyed at the fact that she is lecturing him about the concepts behind the theorems.

“But it’s different if you’ve never played,” Virginia says, signaling to her servant to lay out the game board. “Let’s play one game, just one. I won’t bother you anymore after that, I promise. I’m just so _bored_.”

He doesn’t see how he can get out of his situation without being uncommonly rude—and he is especially intent on presenting a satisfying front to his family members. So, he carefully finds and marks his place in the book, and sets it aside.

Exactly eight minutes and forty-seven seconds later, he sits dumbfounded as Virginia checkmates his king.

“How,” he says flatly. “The strategy I employed was clearly superior to your own, it says as much in the—”

“You understand I’m a person, and not a book, don’t you?” Virginia says, eyebrow raised.

Yes, of course he understands. He’s looking at her face, not the pages of a novel. But it doesn’t matter—person or book, she should still be easy to read, should she not?

“Well, thank you for the game, brother,” Virginia says after a moment of Adrius sitting in contemplative silence.

“Wait,” he stops her. “Let’s play another.”

He loses six more times, but the games get longer, and longer. On their seventh game, they come to a stalemate. On the eighth…

“I win,” he says, sitting back on his heels. Virginia rolls onto her back from where she’s been lying on her belly, nose on the level of the chess board.

“I was so close,” she groans, but she is still laughing. Adrius is struck once again by just how different they are. He can’t stand losing—though he would never admit it to anyone.

“Would you like to play another?” he asks politely.

Virginia sits up and smiles. “Are you having fun?”

He shrugs. “Of course.”

It is surprising how this feels very much like the truth.

***

For their twelfth birthday, they do not go anywhere on vacation. They do not celebrate.

Their mother is dead.  

It happened recently. Too recently for the wounds to have healed. Or so, Adrius thinks, must go the reason behind why he spends his tenth birthday cloistered in their Mars estate with Virginia.

Adrius does not feel particularly wounded. But he was never close to their mother. Or their father. Or Claudius.

He wouldn’t say he is close to Virginia, either, but considering their status as twins, he supposes that’s not entirely correct.

Virginia must have been crying, he thinks, since the day it happened. She certainly hasn’t stopped crying since she arrived at the estate, and as it has been some months since the death, he sees no other answer to her miserable state.

Their actual birthday is quite peaceful for him. He spends most of the day immersed in some of his newer discoveries in the field of politics. In the afternoon, he watches a gladiatorial fight between two of Mars’s finest Stained fighters. This bores him slightly, but he considers purchasing one of the two behemoth Obsidians to attach to his personal detail, before abstaining on the grounds that his father would consider it impudent. In the evening, he wiles away some hours gaming the Luna stock market—he must be secretive about this, as he knows it would normally be looked down on as a common Silver activity. Everyone has their guilty pleasures, he reasons.

Virginia does not emerge from her suites the entire day. Adrius wonders whether he ought to be concerned, but decides that, if it were him, he would loathe anyone who sought to disturb him. So he leaves her be.

It is only late, late at night, long after they are both thought to be asleep, that he hears a knock on his door. He quickly hides the datapad he is using to observe the rise and fall of the stocks under his pillow.

“Who is it?” he demands.

“It’s me,” Virginia’s voice calls through the door. “May I enter?”

He wants to say no. What comes out instead is, “Alright.”

The door pushes open and Virginia slips in from the dark hallway. Her eyes are red, but to his surprise, she has stopped crying.

“Happy birthday,” she tells him.

“You don’t have to wish me,” he snorts. “That’s like saying ‘happy birthday’ to yourself.”

“We’re separate people, Adrius.”

She doesn’t have to tell him that. He is all too aware.

“How was your day?” she asks.

“Enjoyable enough.” He wonders if saying so is insensitive. “How was yours?”

Too late he realizes his error. Quite suddenly, she is crying again. More distressingly, she is now crying all over him. His sister sags onto the bed, tears falling in streams from her eyes, as she tries to wipe them away uselessly.

“Virginia,” he tries to say, as she wails, “ _Virginia_. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s okay,” she sobs, making him feel distinctly as though it is _not_ okay, “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

“What for?” he asks, confused. He is not often confused, but his sister has a particular talent for making him feel lost.

“It’s my fault we didn’t get to do anything for our birthday!”

“That’s a ridiculous thing to say. It’s not as if you—” he stops himself just in time. He does not think it would be reassuring for his sister to hear that she wasn’t responsible for their mother’s death, as factual as the statement is. “Why would you say it’s your fault?”  

“Because,” her whole body heaves, “because the whole reason we got left here alone is because father doesn’t want to talk to me. He won’t even look at me!”

Ah, Adrius realizes. Perhaps this is the reason behind all the crying.

Well. He can’t claim to know a solution. After all, their father never seems to want to look at him, either.

“Virginia,” he sighs, thinking longingly of the Luna stock shares he could be trading, “that’s not your fault. Our father is just… I don’t think he knows how to handle losing someone he cared for.”

He isn’t sure he’s the best person to have this discussion with her—but he can say truthfully that he also does not know what it would be like to lose someone close to him. There is no one who fits that description, after all.

“You just have to give him some time,” he says, reassuringly.

It appears he’s said the right thing, because Virginia’s crying begins to subside. She wipes her eyes on her nightdress.

“I just don’t know what I did to make him so angry with me,” she says quietly.

Adrius looks at her in disbelief. “He’s not angry with you.”

“Then why is he acting like this?” Virginia asks. “I don’t understand.”

What Adrius doesn’t understand is how the reason can be unclear to her.

“Have you… never noticed?” he asks slowly.

“Noticed what?”

“You look exactly like mother,” he says, blankly. How is it possible she didn’t know?

“What?” Virginia gasps. She tugs at her braids self-consciously. “But mother was beautiful.”

Adrius lays back down in bed, rolling over so his back is to her. “You are too.”

He hears her sniffling, but it sounds like the whole episode is winding down. Satisfied that he’s handled it he closes his eyes. Perhaps this will be the push she needs to go back to bed.

Instead, he feels the covers being drawn back, and then the weight of another person crawling into the bed. He despairs.

“Is something else wrong?”

“Well—” Virginia says, “Can I just—do you mind if I stay here for now?”

What does ‘for now’ _mean_ , he thinks. He’ll just tell her he won’t be able to sleep. She’s a big girl, she can handle it. He’ll say no.

“Alright,” he says out loud.

For fuck’s sake, he thinks to himself.

She settles down in the bed next to him. It’s quiet for a long time. He is just starting to wonder if he can sneak his datapad out again after she’s gone to sleep when she speaks.

“Don’t you miss her at all?” his sister asks. “Our mother?”

Saying the words people want to hear is one thing, but when it concerns his own feelings, it’s not so easy to lie. He knows the kind of person he is. Better the people around him have the same expectations for him, so he doesn’t need to clear up any misunderstandings.

He decides on saying “Not really,” instead of a flat “No”.

“How can you not miss her?” Virginia asks.

“I didn’t really know her,” he says. “Not like you did.”

Virginia doesn’t argue with this. It is no secret to anyone that he is not the favorite.

“Still,” she says. “She was our mother.”

“Yes,” Adrius agrees. “But why does that mean I should miss her?”

Virginia has no answer.

“Besides, I see you often enough,” he points out. “You really do look just like her.”

After awhile, Virginia says, “Thanks.” He’s not sure why.

But he says, “You’re welcome.”

She sounds less sad, anyway. Adrius realizes belatedly that the datapad is under the pillow below her head. He gives up on it for the night. He’ll have all of the next day.

“Happy birthday,” he remembers to tell her.

But she’s already asleep.  


End file.
